Stalky & Co (Mobi Classics)

Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky himself is based on Lionel Dunsterville.The stories have elements of revenge, the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from childish or idealised, unlike the typical school story. The critic Edmund Wilson, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending about them. For example, Beetle pokes fun at an earlier, more earnest, boys' book, Eric, or, little by little, thus flaunting his more worldly outlook. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.